Intentional Mentoring: A BIWOC-Centered and Driven Mentoring Relationship
Joe Lee is a Borrowing Specialist in Interlibrary Loan while Jasmine Shumaker serves as a Reference & Instruction Librarian. They view this mentor/mentee relationship as a safe place to share ideas and concerns, while collaborating and learning together. Joe is an aspiring librarian, finishing her degree in spring 2024.
This piece aims to discuss how this mentoring relationship began, related projects, as well as envisioning what direction they would like this mentoring relationship to go in the future. Jasmine and Joe will close with a reflection on how this mentorship impacts their own working relationship, and how the library, moving towards cross-status mentorship models, can use it as an example. They also want to highlight and discuss how their mentorship shapes the ways in which the entire library organization interacts with the rest of the campus community.
The Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery (AOK) is the heart of a robust research campus community located in Baltimore, Maryland, and serves a diverse student population. While it is encouraging to be part of a campus community that supports and inspires academic excellence, there still lacks a space for mentorship opportunities for BIWOC (Black, Indigenous, Women of Color) LIS students within the library itself.
Joe Lee, a graduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park’s MLIS program and a full-time Interlibrary Loan Borrowing Specialist, began seeking out a mentor from whom she could learn, collaborate, and exchange ideas with the goal of eventually becoming a research librarian. Jasmine Shumaker, a Reference & Instruction Librarian, had been at the institution for two and a half years before connecting with Joe. Prior to this current role in the academic library, Jasmine’s experience was mostly in public libraries, working in adult services. Jasmine credits the work of her supportive mentor, a Black woman, for acclimating her to academic librarianship. Perhaps even more crucially, she realized the need for a BIWOC-centered mentorship, especially in the GLAM setting where the majority of library professionals are 87.8% white, and only 12% Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (Rhodes et al., 2023).
Photos by Sun Lee; special thanks to @backwaterbooks.
In the summer of 2022, AOK’s head of Reference and our Instruction Coordinator started the Mentoring Collective as part of their proposal for the Committee of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (CIDE). The intent behind its creation was to provide a space for all library staff, not limited to those focused on librarianship, that fosters mentorship opportunities for those seeking them. Joe began participating in the Mentoring Collective meetings in September 2022, where she mentioned to the group her interest in legal research, specifically legal informatics. Due to this shared interest in government databases, privacy, and intellectual freedom, Jasmine Shumaker was formally introduced to Joe by her own mentor.
It is imperative to note that if it had not been for the involvement of Jasmine’s mentor, another Black woman librarian, this mentorship might not exist. At the time, Jasmine was working on a legal database trial project. Joe enthusiastically expressed interest in working with Jasmine to promote, track usage, and provide feedback on the database. They would also like to highlight that a formally recognized, cross-status mentorship was never established at their library before, giving us ample space to make this truly what they envision. With a faculty member acting as a mentor to an LIS graduate student, Jasmine and Joe considered this mentorship possibility mutually beneficial. Jasmine and Joe also view this collaboration as extremely necessary, working and growing as two BIWOC LIS professionals navigating a predominantly white profession.
Although their mentorship is still in its early stages, the pair have already accomplished and planned many things. Jasmine has fostered Joe’s interest in patron data privacy. Joe connected with the Library Freedom Project (LFP), a collective of library workers dedicated to the education and promotion of library patron data; the pair is now scheduled to attend a regional LFP meet-up this year. Jasmine and Joe have also presented the results of their database trial project to the library, highlighting the effectiveness of their working relationship. Joe and Jasmine have plans to lead a discussion for their library’s Scholarship Discussion Series on mentorship, specifically centered around librarians Emily Joan Sartorius and Julia Maxwell’s chapter titled “Mentee 501: How Mentorship Fits into the LIS Graduate Student Experience” from the book Academic Library Mentoring: Fostering Growth and Renewal. The pair hope that their own experiences can not only aid in the upcoming discussion but also serve as an example of other types of potential collaborations between faculty and staff.
Joe has also shown enthusiasm in shadowing Jasmine and other Reference faculty in the classroom. So far, she has collaborated with Jasmine in instructional sessions with one department, with talks to continue if classes arise in the summer. Joe is also slated to work alongside librarians in future classes in Reference and Instruction. The Reference librarians support Joe’s shadowing and look forward to assigning her hours in the chat reference service, as well as collaborating with her in library workshops on literacy and research. The faculty librarians see this front-facing experience as vital for Joe as she seeks a full-time reference librarian position after obtaining her MLIS. Based on Joe’s current needs and workload, the two decided to meet bimonthly, agreeing to reevaluate this schedule if need be. It is important to mention that Joe has received full support from her supervisor. Jasmine regularly communicates with Joe to ensure that shadowing/co-teaching opportunities do not negatively impact her Interlibrary Loan work.
Additionally, thanks to Jasmine’s experiences serving on several committees, she was able to use her network to introduce Joe to many library-focused organizations such as the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL), the Joint Council of Librarians of Color (JCLC), and others. While Joe was aware of a few resources for librarians of color, she only knew about them because of an EDI-centered LIS course, “Diverse Populations, Inclusion, and Information,” on meeting the information needs of diverse populations. Although this course was crucial in her understanding of cultural proficiency and competency amongst librarians and information professionals, it was not listed as a requirement to complete the MLIS program of study. This once again highlights the need for a mutual mentorship for BIWOC librarians, staff, and students in order to foster communication of shared information, resources, and access.
This mentorship has been, and continues to be, an enriching experience for both Joe and Jasmine. Similar to Emily’s and Julia’s experiences as mentees, Joe found that sharing her interest in legal informatics and research in a safe space not only opened more pathways for involvement, such as serving on search committees for hiring librarians and library staff, but also allowed other librarians to guide her as well. Jasmine identified key groups that would aid in Joe’s development as an information professional, one being the Information Literacy Working Group, where she learned more about instruction and workshop planning. Joe also became involved in the Writing Accountability Group, a weekly meeting of mostly faculty librarians to work on various writing pieces. The pair hopes their mentoring partnership can serve as a blueprint for future cross-status mentoring opportunities within their library.
References
Rhodes, Tamara, Naomi Bishop, and Alanna Aiko Moore. “The Work of Women of Color Academic Librarians in Higher Education: Perspectives on Emotional and Invisible Labor.” up//root: a wehere publication. February 13, 2023.
Rod-Welch, L. J., Weeg, B. E., Sartorius, E. J., & Maxwell, J. (2021). Mentee 501: How Mentorship Fits into the LIS Graduate Student Experience. In Academic library mentoring: Fostering growth and renewal (Vol. 3, pp. 503–517). Essay, Association of College and Research Libraries.
JASMINE SHUMAKER AND JOE LEE
Jasmine Shumaker is a Reference & Instruction Librarian at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and a Master in Library and Information Studies from the University of Oklahoma. In her current position, Jasmine supports mostly social science students, faculty, and staff with research needs. Jasmine’s research interests include the patron data privacy, emotional labor of Black women in librarianship, as well as Black librarian retention. Prior to joining academic librarianship, she worked as an Adult Services Librarian with the District of Columbia Public Library, and was the Business Librarian for the Enoch Pratt Free Library / State Library Resource Center in Baltimore, Maryland. In her spare time, Jasmine enjoys listening to podcasts, playing The Sims, and traveling.
Joe Lee is an Interlibrary Loan specialist at the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is currently studying for her MLIS at the University of Maryland’s iSchool program, where she hopes to specialize in legal research. Prior to joining UMBC, Joe worked as a Library Associate at the Enoch Pratt Library in downtown Baltimore, and at the Sheridan Libraries’ Special Collections department at Johns Hopkins University. She has a bachelor’s degree in Writing Seminars from JHU’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Joe is passionate about empowering BIPOC/BIWOC librarians and library workers, as well as sharing information and awareness of patron privacy rights. She would like to one day use her knowledge of legal research to help make information and resources more accessible for her community members. In her spare time, Joe likes to play RPGs and board games, cuddle with her brother’s cat, and watch way too much Kdrama.